A Celebration of Life

Monarch butterflies are in decline - and more poignantly beautiful than ever

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There I was, minding my own business, scrolling through my News app, when a headline from the World Wildlife Fund sucked all the air out of my feed.

Eastern migratory monarch butterfly populations decrease by 59% in 2024

Clinically efficient words to describe a bitter strain of tragedy woven inextricably into an epic celebration of life.

Monarch butterflies are one of my absolute favorite examples of how far life on earth stretches beyond the imagination of mere mortals.

A lot of animal migrations are pretty mind-bending. A million wildebeest swarming across the African plains? An Arctic Tern flying over 20,000 miles? Rivers full of salmon leaping up waterfalls? Astonishing, all of them.

They stay on course using celestial navigation, or Earth’s magnetic field, or homing signals, or landmarks. They find their ways from pole to pole, to ancestral breeding grounds they last saw as hatchlings, to reunite with lifelong mates at some specific annual nest site. Their stories and their journeys are grand in scale, seemingly impossible, yet regular as clockwork.

But Monarchs take the awe to a new level. Monarch migration is a generational relay event.

Adult Monarchs on the north-bound journey only live around 2 to 6 weeks. During that time, they fly north, lay eggs, and perish. The next generation of adults continues the northward migration started by their ancestors. It takes around 4 generations to reach the northern boundary of their migration route. And then something new happens, again. Adults emerging in the far north enter a state called diapause. This generation will migrate south in a single stretch, overwinter, and start the migration cycle anew the following spring.

Here on our little Maine homestead, we are at that northern migration boundary. We don’t experience Monarchs as a large group dynamic. We experience them singly, with great excitement. They are dramatically noticeable, a flash of fiery orange sweeping over a wildflower landscape. And we delight over each individual Monarch as it drifts and whirls from blossom to blossom, wishing it all the best in its remarkable life story.

Because an adult up here is likely southbound! Likely to be that bewildering generation that lives for nine long months instead of six blazing weeks, journeying a full three thousand mile path that hasn’t been travelled in four generations. It’s astonishing.

Eastern Monarchs overwinter in towering, secluded forests tucked into remote regions of Mexico, which they transform into pure magic. Rustling, rippling, shimmering collections of amber stained-glass chandeliers, gracing the canopies of these woodland cathedrals (which I’ve only seen courtesy of National Geographic, of course!).

I looked up the proper name for a group of Monarch butterflies resting in the treetops. They are called a “roost” or a “bivouac.” I respectfully decline. I’ll call them a “flutter.” I never really expected to see a flutter of Monarchs, in real life, but then…

It was September 2021. We were leaving on a long trip to Texas, at a point in the pandemic when vaccines were not yet available for my youngest daughter. We didn’t have a choice, really - my mom was slipping into dementia, and reaching the point where she could no longer easily manage her basic finances. She vehemently didn’t want us to come (being in quite full-fledged denial at this stage), but we needed to navigate some sort of legal path to make sure we could provide for her care, and we could only be sure we could sort it all out in person, in Texas.

And so we made our plans, secure in the knowledge that we were doing what was right, determined to find joy where possible along the way. We were quite careful, all masks and outdoor spaces, minimizing contact in all the ways we could manage. To avoid restaurants, we searched our routes for parks where we could eat snacks that we packed along with us. And, suddenly, there were the Monarchs.

Clustered, roosting. Filling the maple trees next to the parking lot, right outside the restrooms. Fluttering amongst one another in amber ripples. We stood beneath the branches, mesmerized.

Here I was, resigned to travel out of unpleasant necessity, experiencing a moment that would have been a highlight of any family vacation under the very best of circumstances! Surrounded by flutters of Monarchs. Right there at Lighthouse Point Park in East Haven, Connecticut, no more than a pit stop and a leg-stretcher along our tedious Texas-bound concrete corridor.

Monarchs do not face an easy journey. It’s a long road filled with many perils. And we’re not making it any easier for them, as our heavy footprint across landscape and climate disrupts their exquisite balance with silently devastating consequences.

These are the balances of life, are they not? Where there is sorrow, peace (though unseen) is never actually far away. Where there is joy, trouble (though yet unimagined) lingers nearby.

An intermingled tension, impossible to disentangle or distill. In every season, Monarchs are a celebration of life. Their decline, worsening year by year, is a counterpoint that heightens their loveliness while slowly breaking my heart. And so, whenever I can think of it, I will stand in the midst of my sorrows and bask in the joy of their flutters. 💕

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